08MAR 2012
© For a contrary opinion, you can read this email from a female architecture student who believes that women suffer no handicap whatever.
We aren't saying don't study architecture, as others have wilfully misinterpreted us. Just warning you to bring your sunscreen rather than your snowboots.
Our own theory why there are few great female architects : Writing in Slate, our favourite critic, Witold Rybczynski, discussed how many of the dead-white-male great architects (Corbusier, Wright, Van der Rohe, Khan, Gehry) only made it into superstardom in their mid- to late 60s. We performed a similar analysis many years ago in The Favored Circle, but failed to make gender distinctions. Mea culpa!
In a 2007 article for the New York Times, Nicolai Ourousoff wrote:
“A young architect with serious creative ambition is routinely expected to work endless hours for little pay. Recognition and high-profile commissions, if they materialize at all, typically arrive in an architect's 50s — well past the typical age for starting a family. Not surprisingly, many of the most famous men in architecture today — now in their 60s and 70s — depended heavily on the support of their wives as they rose through the ranks. The wives ran their offices, raised their children and loyally bolstered their egos. But you won’t find their names on the front door”
In the Western world, women typically retire from the workforce before men. If men are often expected to retire at 65 years of age, women are expected to do so at 60. Which means they miss out on the super-star status that their near-geriatric male colleagues finallly achieve.
© Gae Aulenti Our advice is: sisters, hang in there for five more years!
Research about women in architecture : In this article, we're only offering our own observations.
First, visit the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Then read Why do women leave architecture by Anne de Graft-Johnson et al (2004) of the University of the West of England. To its great credit, this report was funded by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Even those idiots at the RAIA have managed to put together something decent. The architecture librarian at the University of Nevada has also assembled this brilliant bibliography.
Then take a look at the writings of Prof Sherry Ahrentzen, probably the world's leading theorist on the subject of women in architecture and in architecture school. You should also certainly check out Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architecture Profession(University of Illinois Press, 2001) by Prof Kathryn Anthony. And we would also direct you to some stuff by Dr Carla Corroto. From the emails we've exchanged, it's clear that she knows more about these issues than we ever will. Take a look at ‘The Architecture of Sexual Harassment’ which appears in In the Company of Men (Northeastern University Press, 2004).
When you've done with all that, read ‘Women Architects and Their Discontents’ by Bridget Fowler and Fiona Wilson Sociology 38(1): 101-119).
Women in architectural education : An architectural education is, in its own whacky way, much more enriching than the usual university sit-in-a-lecture-hall-all-day sort of thing; the gender split is tolerable (but not perfect); and everyone gets to meet lots of nice upper-middle class people and have a lot of fun (which, as Paul Krugman notes in one of his books, is the whole point of universities).
© Kazuyo Sejima But it can also be terrifying, especially for the less-gifted. And, once out of school, many female graduates either never enter practice or leave a few years after graduation, as we discuss below.
Easy targets for harassment: There is a moderate amount of sexual harassment in all architecture schools, Australian and otherwise. Whether this is more or less than in any other discipline in the universities, we do not know. However, the unusually intimate nature of architectural education gives any form of harassment a decided edge.
Of course, there are special counsellors employed by the universities for people thus threatened. But don't think they are there to help the complainant. They are there to protect the university— who pays them, after all? We can think of several examples from our days as an academic at the University of Sydney where the complainant was not only discouraged from contacting the police over an alleged rape attempt; but pressured by very senior figures in the University administration to quietly drop the matter entirely.
Special Note: For a contrary opinion, you should read this former female architecture student's belief that there is no such thing as sexual harassment at a university.
The fabled glass ceiling
Female architecture graduates: lots of them!
US data
The graph below shows the proportion of female graduates from US architecture schools, using the most recent data we have. Quite a solid steady climb in the proportion of women from 1970 to the early 1980s, but then we see the ratio gently bump into the fabled glass-ceiling. Though the 2000s, the ratio has settled into the 40-44% range.
Australian data
Over the past ten years, the big expansion in architecture students in our own Australia has come from a female influx.
© Elizabeth Diller In 1984 only 21% of architecture graduates were female; in 1996 this had grown to 35%, and the proportion is closer to 40% today.
UK data
In the United Kingdom, 38% of graduates are women.
Female architects: where are they
A prime mystery is: what happens to these female graduates? In the USA, the UK, and Australia, about 35% to 40% of architecture graduates have been women for between 10 and 20 years. We should expect to see something like that ratio reflected in the data for practising or registered architects. The data we can find suggests that women graduates do not spend long in the occupation. True, the data is scant and spotty, but it is all we have.
Consider this table for the United States, showing female participation in various occupations. That's not registration or licensure, just participation.
In the United Kingdom, only 12% of registered architects are women. Data for registered or licensed architects from the USA is difficult to obtain, thanks to state-based registration: one estimate puts it at about 9% (source: Fowler and Wilson, 2004). The same problems apply to Australia.
Others have pointed out that you can count the celebrity women architects of today on one hand: Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, Gae Aulenti.
© Bureau of Labor Statistics And: so many others seem to be part of a husband and wife team — Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, Alison and Peter Smithson of yesteryear; and more recently Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.
So of those women who do stay in, quite a lot are married to other architects. Or they have the funds to support them for decades without a paying job. A goodly portion of the others end up in academia or become critics, maintaining their registration but never practising.
Where do the other graduates go? We don't know
[via archsoc.com].
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© Gae Aulenti
© Kazuyo Sejima
© Elizabeth Diller
© Bureau of Labor Statistics
Women in Architecture / Garry Stevens : Centre for Architectural Sociology
Posted in Architecture - Architecture by * FORMAKERS
All occupations, of course, should be gender-neutral. We are led to conclude that women often get a raw deal in their education in architecture school, and in their careers in architectural practice. Don't send us a nasty email about how we discourage women from entering architecture. We have no intention of doing so. Exactly the opposite, in fact. We think that the architectural studio and profession is unfriendly to women. As you can read below, so do a number of female architecture academics.© © Gae Aulenti© Kazuyo Sejima© Elizabeth Diller© Bureau of Labor Statistics
©
© Gae Aulenti
© Kazuyo Sejima
© Elizabeth Diller
© Bureau of Labor Statistics
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